Death in a Promised Land (14 page)

Greenwood Avenue, looking north from Archer.

Courtesy of Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Library

The Red Cross estimated that at least 715 black families left Tulsa but returned later for “various reasons.” On June 2, the New York
Times
reported a statement by members of a railroad crew that they passed some three thousand blacks heading north from Tulsa to Bar-tlesville—undoubtedly an exaggerated report. Some two hundred Tulsans left the city by rail, perhaps permanently, during the first two weeks after the riot. One hundred and fifty of these had their tickets purchased by the Red Cross. The others, who could purchase their own tickets, were charged only half fare. But not all black Tulsans who wanted to leave, even temporarily, were able to do so. Police, guardsmen, and “relief” workers combed areas north and east of town and took many of the people whom they found there to the internment centers.
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II

Tulsa’s first experience under martial law was brief. Business hours in the city were initially set from 8
A.M
. to 6
P.M
., except for groceries, meat markets, and other agencies contributing to the “comfort of the people.” No automobiles, except for those of physicians, the Red Cross, or the police, were allowed on the street during the night. The National Guard authorities further deemed that any persons who were found on the streets with arms without “written permission from military authority or by virtue of proper commission under civil law, will be considered as public enemies and treated accordingly.” The troops stood guard at various points throughout the city.
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Life under martial law was modified on June 2 and 3, and then terminated on the latter date. The modifications were enacted through a number of “field orders” issued by Adjutant General Barrett. Field Order No. 1 altered military rule so as to allow the civil authorities to begin prosecution of alleged rioters. The second did a number of things. It allowed most normal business and social activities to resume (at least for whites), and it removed all guardsmen from the “business area,” which presumably referred to the “white” business area, namely downtown. However, the field order also decreed that people would be allowed neither “to congregate on the streets nor engage in heated controversy.” It forbade any white people from going into the burned black district without a pass from the military. Blacks were to be allowed in the “burnt district or negro quarters” if they presented their “police protection” cards. This field order further declared that “all negroes living outside of the city and now detained in the various refugee and detention places will be held under detention and brought before the authorities at the city hall for investigation.”
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Field Order No. 3 prohibited funerals in the city. The fourth order dealt particularly with the city’s interned black population. In essence, it enacted forced labor:

All the able-bodied negro men remaining in detention camp at the Fair Grounds and other places in the city of Tulsa will be required to render such service and perform such labor as is required by the military commission and the Red Cross in making the sanitary provisions for the care of the refugees.

Able-bodied women not having the care of children, will also be required to perform such service as may be required in the feeding and care of refugees.

This order covers any labor necessary in the care of the health or welfare of those people, by reason of their misfortune, must be looked after by different agencies of relief.
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Adjutant General Barrett also directed the county registrar to stop registering deeds from the destroyed area.
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The termination of martial law did not, however, produce an immediate end of the military’s presence in the city. The Tulsa units of the National Guard remained on active duty until the morning of June 4, at which time some of them were to leave for their annual summer encampment. Battery “B” of the Tulsa-based 2nd Field Artillery was to remain in the city, “held in readiness” to cooperate with city and county authorities if needed, but was not to act as an organization unless ordered to do so by the governor.
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When it was announced on June 2 that martial law was to be ended in Tulsa the next day, some people were disturbed. During a directors’ meeting of the Chamber of Commerce on June 3, “a motion prevailed appointing a committee ... to confer with the general executive welfare committee and ask that martial law and the troops be maintained in Tulsa for at least one more week.” One member of this newly appointed committee was the Reverend Harold G. Cooke, the white pastor of the Centenary Methodist Church, who stated three days later that blacks were the most at blame for the riot. He further claimed that there had been “no spirit of mob violence” amongst the crowd of whites in front of the courthouse, which included him, “but when criminal and liquor-frenzied niggers appeared on the streets and outraged the white people of this community, the thing was off.”
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It is also possible that some black Tulsans may have desired that the National Guard troops, at least those sent in from the state capital, remain in the city for a longer period. After the riot, Mary E. Jones Parrish performed interviews for the Inter-Racial Commission, and of them she stated, “everyone with whom I met was loud in praise of the State troops who so gallantly came to the rescue of stricken Tulsa.” But in reference to the “Home Guards”—by which she probably was referring to the numerous “special deputies”—she found denunciation of them “on every lip.” This attitude was echoed by E. A. Loupe, a black plumber, who claimed that the “Home Guards” had offered no protection to blacks during the riot, but “joined in with the hoodlums in shooting in good citizens’ homes.” Seeing this, Loupe took his family and a few friends in his automobile and drove four miles outside the city, “where we were gathered up by the State troops who were perfect gentlemen and treated us like citizens of real America.”
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This white couple apparently thought that the destruction in “Deep Greenwood” might make a good backdrop for a snapshot. They were not alone in a desire to commemorate the riot, for later one group of white entrepreneurs sold postcards of photographs of the riot and its aftermath, including photos of corpses.

Courtesy of Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Library

The brick shells of the black business district loom behind the remains of black homes in the foreground.

Courtesy of Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Library

To replace the departed guardsmen, American Legion members were sworn in as police officers and “a force of 100 emergency minute men” was organized by Colonel P. J. Hurley in conjunction with the sheriff’s office and the Chamber of Commerce. This group of “minute men” was better known as the Business Men’s Protective League, and it played an active role in the “policing” of the city. Its members guarded the roads leading into Tulsa under instructions to halt any suspicious looking persons or automobiles, using force if necessary. In at least one instance, these guards did shoot, severely wounding a man and slightly injuring his sister when they refused a command to stop their car.
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This guarding of the highways leading into the city was a response to the lingering fear that many white Tulsans had of a black “counterattack” from outlying areas. Captain Blaine of the Tulsa police made a “scouting trip” by airplane to several centers of the black population in eastern Oklahoma to investigate rumors that blacks were preparing for some form of retaliatory violence. He found no such evidence. Perhaps the first rumor of this kind occurred on June 1, when Colonel Rooney of the National Guard heard that some five hundred black Muskogeeans were en route to Tulsa by train. He enacted precautionary measures to meet the train, but the report proved false. These rumors, and the actions which they generated, also tended to increase the isolation from the outside world which black Tulsa found itself in after the riot. For the first few days after the violence, all blacks who came to Tulsa from other communities were turned away at the city limits by white guards unless they agreed to take a black person home with them. One further example of the fear that there was more violence to come, or that violence in Tulsa could easily be provoked, was the fact that for several days after the riot the Pullman Company would not allow black porters to work on trains passing through Tulsa.
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III

The restoration of law and order was the first priority in post-riot Tulsa, and the military authorities played the key role in this undertaking. Other needs, however, such as relief for the victims of the riot, were nearly as urgent. But here, as in most other post-riot activities, the primary players were civilians.

Any grass-roots actions of charity by Tulsa’s white citizenry were generally limited to the first few days after the riot. On the morning of June 1, white citizens and church groups, in addition to the Salvation Army, “brought in coffee and sandwiches for the men on duty and prisoners and refugees.” The Chamber of Commerce reported that on June 7 “dozens” of automobiles had been consigned to the Red Cross, and that “thousands of articles of wearing apparel and household utensils were assembled and distributed to the needy.” Much of this activity was probably organized by the white churches and service groups, but one student of the riot has written that by June 3 “there was little activity at any of the churches except that they were used as collection points for bedding and clothing.” Perhaps of questionable altruism, and an example which helps to illuminate the dubious nature of much of the local white “relief” activities, was the donation of fifty pieces of luggage by a Tulsa trunk company for use by homeless black Tulsans.
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Yet, regardless of the general lack of sympathy in white Tulsa for the conditions faced by their black brethren, and the extremely minimal and brief charitable activities which the local whites performed, “honest” relief work did continue in Tulsa, primarily through the Red Cross and the “Colored Citizens Relief Committee and East End Welfare Board.” Of these two groups, the Red Cross probably wielded the most power, primarily owing to the funds which they had available. Unfortunately, little is known about the East End Welfare Board, but in all likelihood it was primarily an agency of organization and coordination of post-riot activities and strategy in black Tulsa. “These men worked faithfully and have fought many battles for their fellowman,” Mary E. Jones Parrish wrote of this group. “They looked after the needs of the people both physically and legally to the best of their ability, with the assistance of the outside world.”
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Red Cross activities began in Tulsa on June 1, but it was not until a couple of days later that they received official sanction from the civilian authorities. Initially, its operations were headquartered in the downtown area, but on June 3, an officer from the divisional headquarters in St. Louis arrived in Tulsa and moved the operational offices to the Booker T. Washington School. An emergency hospital, a central first aid station, and a dispensary were also established at the school, and the medical work performed there was a collaboration of efforts between the Red Cross, local physicians, the County Superintendent of Health, and the State of Oklahoma.
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